Services Standards: Defining the Core Consumer Elements ... - ANEC

Hans-W. Micklitz
substantial consumer contribution if the envisaged Internal Market for services
is to bring benefits to the consumer as well.
• Information on professional qualifications is scarce. The reason might be
found in Directive 2005/36/EC 2 on professional qualifications, which
leaves it for Member States to decide over the education of the
respective professions. However, this does not explain why European
Standards Bodies do not make use of the leeway left to them, some
notable examples set aside.
• Most of the directives, regulations and standards are dealing with
equipment and premises in some form or the other. However, there is no
systematic approach to equipment and premises, not even for the
mandatory requirements under the General Product Safety Directive
2001/95/EC 3 .
• Information obligations are seen as a means by which to give shape to
the substance of the service. There is a tendency to provide the
information in writing, however, without making clear whether this could
also mean providing the information in an electronic form. EC rules rely
more heavily on pre-contractual mechanisms than technical standards.
• EC regulation on the content of contracts for services is patchy, in that it
does not deal fully and comprehensively with the content, the quality, the
safety requirements, billing and the payment modalities. It is rather
deficient so far as remedies are concerned. However, there is a world of
a difference between law making and standard-setting. Most of the
standards do not spend a single word on the concrete obligations of the
service providers or on consumers’ rights in case of improper or
insufficient performance.
• After sales services are largely disregarded, whereas rules against
insolvency protection are relatively well-developed. Complaint handling
and dispute settlement appear, but are not linked to Recommendations
98/257/EC and 2001/310/EC 4 . They could be linked to draft ISO DIS
10003 5 , once it is adopted, which, however, contrary to the official EC
policy, put emphasis on in-house complaint handling.
2 OJ L 255, 30.9.2005, 22.
3 OJ L 11, 15.1.2002, 4.
4 OJ L 115, 17.4.1998, 31 and OJ L 109, 19.4.2001, 56.
5 The full title of the draft is ‘Quality management – Customer satisfaction – Guidelines for
dispute resolution external to organisations’.
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